Design, manufacture, and assembly of an electronics system, such as a computer system, includes many steps. Because of the very small sizes of electronic components, and their connection via miniature conductive traces on circuit boards, it is becoming more difficult to verify proper design and/or assembly of an electronics system.
Physical inspection of the inclusion of proper components of a fully assembled electronics system is time consuming and awkward because of the small size of each component and the compact arrangement of those components together in the electronics system. Moreover, introducing external measurement equipment for electrical, optical or mechanical testing of electronic components is equally difficult due to the same space limitations.
Attempts to incorporate testing circuitry, verification circuitry, or management circuitry into electronic components tend to frustrate primary design goals of the components of the electronics system to maximize function while minimizing size. In particular, adding such circuitry into a component occupies scarce space within the component, as well as occupying pins and traces used to communicate to and from the component. Accordingly, adding additional circuitry for testing, verification, or for monitoring communication requires eliminating some functions of the component, or require increasing the size of the component.
Accordingly, techniques for monitoring components of an electronics system, such as computer systems, for proper design, manufacture, assembly, and/or repair and maintenance have struggled to keep pace with the miniaturization of those components and electronics systems, as well as with the speed of assembly of in today's high volume production environment.